Yeasayer Speak on New LED-Packed Live Show and the "Demented R&B" of 'Fragrant World'

Last week, Yeasayer announced they were shuffling around some tour dates in support of the band's upcoming Fragrant World album, including their Toronto show. The Brooklyn trio will now play Toronto on November 9, moving the venue from the Sound Academy to the Danforth Music Hall.

Singer/multi-instrumentalist Chris Keating explained to Exclaim! that the decision to reschedule some concerts had to do with beefing up their light show to maximize the concert-going experience.

"We moved the show to be at the end of the tour instead of the beginning. It's in November now," he said. "We're doing this custom-built light show and it's getting down to the wire. We shuffled around some early dates. We didn't want to start off the tour not having our light show.

"It's different from the [Odd Blood] tour. It's being built right now and it's crazy. We're really into making the light show as cool as it can be. Even at small venues. A friend that I went to school with is an industrial designer and built all of the stuff, out of imported Chinese LED that he wired together. This one is bigger, a little more pro. But still the same idea."

As for their new "demented R&B" album album, Fragrant World, Keating says the R&B influence was a result of breaking indie rock's barriers and expressing their fondness for the genre's weirdness.

"I think from 1997 to 2002, which was the halcyon period, it was following a time where R&B became genre of music that had become really cheesy using synthesizers and drum machines," Keating says. "It was lovably cheesy, but after a funk revolution of the '70s it became really cheesy for two decades. And we were witnessing mostly white bands rip off that sound through the '80s.

"Into the '90s, you had Timbaland, Just Blaze and the Neptunes injecting life back into the genre. That to me was a very formative period, because then I was a kid into Sonic Youth and Pavement, indie stuff, and then I'd hear those producers on the radio and say, 'Wait a minute, that music is way weirder than indie rock.' Ginuwine's 'Pony' was a real cultural shift and it's still something I look at and say that's an amazing song."

As previously reported, Fragrant World arrives August 21 through Secretly Canadian. Read more of Exclaim!'s new Yeasayer interview here and check out all their dates below.